Nonprofit Prospect Park Alliance on Oct. 30 received a landmark $10 million gift from the Leon Levy Foundation to support the care, restoration and long-term sustainability of Prospect Park’s 350 acres of natural areas, including Brooklyn’s last remaining upland forest and only lake.
The new Shelby White and Leon Levy Woodlands Endowment will fund four additional gardeners dedicated to maintaining critical areas of the park, including the Ravine and Lakeside.
The Alliance currently employs seven gardeners for the park and the new team members will help strengthen ecological care in these high-need zones, officials said.
"Shelby is a Brooklyn hero: her support of the park and a range of Brooklyn cultural organizations has transformed our borough, and reflects her strong ethos of philanthropy to the causes she holds dear," said Morgan Monaco, president of Prospect Park Alliance.
The announcement comes nearly a year after a devastating two-acre fire scorched the Ravine in November 2024.
This marks the Leon Levy Foundation’s second major contribution to Prospect Park. In 2008, the foundation donated another $10 million to restore the lake shoreline, resulting in the creation of the Shelby White and Leon Levy Esplanade and Chaim Baier Music Island, projects that revived Frederick Law Olmsted plus Calvert Vaux’s original 19th-century vision for the park.
“Prospect Park was my childhood playground," White said. "We are delighted that this endowment gift will help ensure that generations of children will continue to experience the wonder and natural beauty of Brooklyn’s magnificent park.”
Since its founding, Prospect Park Alliance has invested more than $15 million in the restoration and care of the park’s meadows, woodlands plus watercourse, planting over half a million trees, shrubs and plants.
Alliance staff and volunteers this fall will replant nearly 3,000 native trees, shrubs and plant, among them American Holly, Wild Geranium and Woodland Phlox to help restore the area’s biodiversity.
